Page 9 of Rebel's Fated Mate

"Stand down, stranger," a gravelly voice commanded from the center of the ensemble. "Unless you wish to taste the poison from our archers' sting."

Hesitantly, I held up my empty hands, letting the sword clatter back into its sheath. "I mean you no harm. I am alone, hunted by soldiers of the Emperor."

A tense pause stretched between us before the same gravelly voice responded. "You speak true, though I know not why the Crown's forces track you." The tiny figure pushed back her hood, revealing a weathered face lined with the craggy map of a hardened life. "But make no threat against myself or my kin, lest you answer to Annis the Dreaded."

Annis...I knew that name from the whispers that wound their way from tavern to tavern. A legendary rebel leader, Scourge of the West, whose very name shook the palace guards. If she saw me as a foe, my life was forfeit.

I immediately dropped to one knee, keeping my gaze respectfully downcast. "You have my oath of fealty, Dreaded One. I am no friend of the Emperor's butchers who chase me." I paused, choosing my next words carefully. "Though you may regret offering quarter once you learn my name..."

A contemptuous snort cut me off, though Annis' tone remained impassive. "Try me, huntling. I fear no names nor men."

I steeled myself before replying. "I am Kael. Kael Westborn, former Captain of the Emperor's army...before I was accused of treason and branded a traitor to the realm."

Murmurs rippled through the surrounding rebels. Annis herself studied me in a long silence before her expression shifted to one of incredulity, then admiration.

"Tend to his wounds. He is no traitor, but the Dire Bear of prophecy we've long expected." When the others hesitated, she fixed them with a reproachful glare. "Do you not feel it? Destiny's weave flows through this one. He carries bur'dun'dal, the bloodline of the First Wardens—protectors of our ancestral ways. Warriors born to lead when all hope seems lost."

The revelations crashed over me in waves of disorienting vertigo. Bloodline of legend? Protector of ancestral ways? I opened my mouth to protest, to call this madness, but Annis had already turned away, disappearing into the tree line once more.

As the rebels tended to my injuries and offered sustenance, my mind whirled. What game did the fates play at? First branded a traitor, hunted and reviled...and now some mythical chosen one destined to lead? A derisive snort escaped my cracked lips. If this was destiny's path, it was one riddle after another with each step.

But I could not deny the electric frisson that had pulsed through me at Annis' words. It resonated in my very bones, an ancestral echo I could not quite place.

For now, I would follow where this thread led--I had no choice anyway. The world as I knew it had shifted, and nothing would be as it once seemed.

"That night, the dream came again, more vivid than ever before. I ran, breath ragged as my boots pounded the hard-packed earth, with the familiar sounds of pursuit echoing around me."

No matter which way I turned, they seemed to be closing in, an inexorable tide of steel and crimson capes. Panic flooded my veins as I put on one last desperate burst of speed, only to catch my foot on a gnarled root.

I crashed to the loam in a tangle of limbs and torn cloth, the wind knocked from my lungs. Gasping, I rolled onto my back just as the imperial hounds broke through the tree line. A dozen blades glinted greedily in the filtered sunlight as they closed in for the kill.

"Stay back!" a voice like sun-kissed honey rang out. A figure strode into the clearing, emanating an aura of power and grace. It was her, the fiery-haired woman from my previous visions. "This one is not meant to be slain this day."

The soldiers faltered, confusion wrinkling their brows. But their leader, a grizzled veteran by the look of him, spat disdainful words that made my cheeks burn.

The woman's expression hardened, and she gestured at me almost casually. "Show them your true face, Bear of Legends. Let them reap what they've sown."

Something primordial stirred within me at her words, an ancient power that shrugged off the fragile trappings of humanity. My flesh resisted, contorted, and began reshaping itself into something primal and unstoppable.

Bones crunched, elongating into wicked claws. Muscle swelled, dense as oak. A tangle of fur erupted along my grotesquely shifting limbs as I grew larger, more ferocious with each agonizing second until I towered over every man there by at least another three feet. When the convulsions finally ceased, I no longer stood as Kael, the hunted refugee.

A towering beast, all rippling brawn and gnashing fangs, greeted the horrified soldiers. A primal, feral growl reverberated from the deepest recesses of my new form.

The woman watched, unperturbed, as I laid into the shrieking men, each swipe of my massive paws rendering flesh from bone. Their pitiful blades seemed to rebound harmlessly from my shaggy hide as I reduced them to mangled wreckage in mere breaths.

When the last gurgling cry fell silent, I turned to face her. I expected fear and revulsion in those piercing emerald eyes. But she only gazed upon me with a slight, knowing smile, as if she had been waiting eons for this moment to unfold.

With a shudder, my bestial shape collapsed in on itself until I was restored to my human visage once more, kneeling amid the gruesome remains. The woman strode forward unhesitatingly, reaching out to caress my cheek with the back of her fingers.

"You have always been so strong, Kael," she murmured. The soft pad of her thumb traced the sharp line of my cheekbone. "But this is only the first foray in the saga that awaits, my dire bear."

Her face was mere inches from mine, her eyes holding me utterly transfixed. I drank in her features—the elegant curve of her jaw, the full swell of her ruby lips, the gentle swell of her bosom.

"There is still so much to be done if we are to stop the Emperor's madness and restore balance to these lands," she continued in a low, conspiratorial tone. "Powers to be unleashed and destinies to be claimed."

Then, ever so gently, she leaned in and pressed those full lips to mine. I gasped at the searing contact, every nerve ending bursting into rapturous flame. Instinctively, my arms encircled her lithe form, pulling her closer as the kiss deepened with escalating fervor.

Just when the consuming ache blossomed into a fire searing my very soul, her form began to dissipate like tendrils of wafting smoke. Her last words as she disappeared were, "Come find me my love. Come save me."

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